I have been dutch oven cooking for groups for a long time. I do not think there is a trick . What I do is wash a used oven with water only,( Never use dish soap) then heat it to dry all the moister then give it a quick spray with cooking oil. When oven is cool wipe out excess oil and store in a dry place until the next meal. This is just regular use and care for cast iron no big deal. over time the Iron will become very well seasoned and cook wonderful.

Bacon has to much sugar which burns it also will go rancid in a short storage time.

We have a large collection of inherited cast iron for use on the wood stove (old Lange). Mmmm, Bacon. Yessss! If you're using oil try peanut oil as it has a much higher burn temperature than regular vegetable oil. If you can't tolerate the taste in a certain dish then canola (aka rapeseed) is next best.

Using a little (very little) soap on well seasoned cast iron is OK if reallly necessary but keep away from detergent. However, if it's really been screwed up you can "start over" with detergent and a run through the dishwasher. Just pull it out before the dry cycle or it might rust. If it's rusted you're down to bead blasting.... I'd fry a LOT of bacon before resorting to any of these methods though :+)

Here is the instructions from LODGE CAST IRON COOKWARE. LODGE by the way is the accepted "airstream" of cookware if I may. It is the oldest, best selling cast iron in the business. I think they probably know best. It sure works for me.

Here is the instructions from LODGE CAST IRON COOKWARE. LODGE by the way is the accepted "airstream" of cookware if I may. It is the oldest, best selling cast iron in the business. I think they probably know best. It sure works for me.

Yup - this is THE definative way to season cast iron. I was looking for this on the Lodge web site but all I came up with was the use and care for Lodge Logic pre-seasoned cookware.

Greetings Stef. This appearance you spoke of on your cast iron is caused by NOT wiping the excess oil off before seasoning. A short outline of what I do is. Use virgin oil, preferably the FlaxSeed oil, as it has one of the highest smoke temp range. After cleaning the CI skillet (E-Tank, etc) I bake the CI in the oven for a few minutes, first to drive off all moisture then coat it lightly with virgin FlaxSeed oil. Thren take a drier cloth and wipe it dry again. (there will be oil on it, you just don't need to see it dripping or wet) Place in the top rack in the oven upside down. The lower rack, place a sheet of aluminum shiny side up. Turn on Oven to 300F for 30 minutes, then up the oven temp by 50 F for each 30 minutes..Finally at 450F to 500F, leave it for 2 hours..Turn off, and allow it to cool naturally for atleast 2 hours before removing. Many purist tht I know, will repeat this process 5 or 6 times to get that proper seasoning. First cook off use bacon. Nothing better~!

I noticed the Lodge link no longer works. But you can go to this page and skip down to Refurbish Your Finish.

One thing I've found recently is that when I have some really stuck on gunk, like seems to happen with breakfast sausage, letting it soak with white vinegar or adding just a splash of vinegar to some water seems to do the trick. I'll caution that our cast iron is very old and has a base seasoning layer that's been built up over decades of use.

Lodge has been around for 120 years. But Wagner Ware had a small head start. They used to dominate the market and Wagner Ware Sidney accounts for about 1/2 of our collection.

Recently I've started using Avocado oil for cooking and have been very pleased.